UnFictionalUnbelievably true stories of chance encounters that changed the world. A pair of mail-order shoes that led to the film The Outsiders. A secret road to a California paradise. The day LA and smog first met. Stories that will stick in your head like a memory. It’s UnFictional, hosted by Bob Carlson.

The DocumentThe Document is a new kind of mash-up between documentaries and radio. It goes beyond clips and interviews, mining great stories from the raw footage of documentaries present, past and in-progress. A new episode is available every other Wednesday on iTunes and wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

To the PointA weekly reality-check on the issues Americans care about most. Host Warren Olney draws on his decades of experience to explore the people and issues shaping – and disrupting - our world. How did everything change so fast? Where are we headed? The conversations are informal, edgy and always informative. If Warren's asking, you want to know the answer.

FROM THIS EPISODE

Walter Mosley is one of the most celebrated writers in the genre, and since 1990's Devil in a Blue Dress, his Easy Rawlins books have been favorites. Easy is part of a sub-tradition of what we might call 'reluctant detectives.' He isn't a licensed PI, just a guy people turn to for help. Fans thought the series might be over when Easy drove off a cliff in Blonde Faith in 2008, but he's back, in Little Green, on the Sunset Strip, in the southern parts of town, and out by the beach during the flower-power 1960's.

Dan Fante's Point Doom is a real thriller, with Girl with the Dragon Tattoo-level violence and splatter, maybe even more. Many detectives in the genre are defrocked cops; Fante one-ups that and makes his protagonist, who bears a not-superficial resemblance to Fante himself, an ex-private investigator who has drunk his way out of his license. Now sober, he refuses to get pushed around, and lots of people try. (Fante's last book was a memoir of his father, the legendary John Fante.)

Steph Cha is the newcomer, and her Follow Me Home features a Korean-American heroine, Juniper Song, who has a Raymond Chandler fixation, a "What Would Philip Marlowe Do?" approach to life. For lovers of the city, this is a treat, with visits to a dozen different recognizable neighborhoods, across the ethnic enclaves and the enclaves of the rich, with a fun, spunky narrator with real depth, and a true noir plot: people are lousy, and then they disappoint you -- except maybe Cha and Song.